Her eyes fell open when a ringing in the distance disturbed her sleep. For a minute, she looked around the huge room, wondering where the sound was coming from. Her gaze fell on her phone on the floor. It must have fallen off her hands when she slept off clutching onto it. Sighing, she retrieved it just as soon as it stopped ringing. She was just about to go back to sleep when it rang a second time.
Rina wondered who it was calling her that early, then checked the time on the small alarm clock on the nightstand. She sat up at once when she realized it was noon already, receiving the call at once.
“Joel?”
“Fuck!” Joel sighed in relief the second he heard her voice. He had been so worried about her since he heard on the news early that morning that her cottage had been attacked by her anti-fans, and that no one knew her whereabouts. He had driven there that morning but met some men working who refused him entrance into the cottage, even though he told them he was her boss. They seemed to be obeying an order from a higher-up and Joel knew he had no powers to make them go against it.
“Where are you? Are you hurt? Do you need me to come get you? Did you have breakfast?” he questioned in rapid fire. “God. Rina! Don’t do this again.”
Swinging her legs out of the bed, Rina pulled herself up and walked into the closet to use the mirror.
“Slow down, Joel,” she murmured, grateful that he had, at least, been worried about her. “I’m fine. It was just a little issue.”
“You call that a little issue?” Joel couldn’t believe how calm she sounded. “Your cottage is filled with workers with stern expressions as if a world war took place there. Yet, you claim it was just a little issue.”
She shrugged, then remembered he couldn’t see her. “You stopped by the cottage?” Rina was surprised that Joel had gone there, but even more stunned that Zayn had started working on it less than twenty-four hours after the attack, despite how much she had refused his help.
“I had to see if you were okay.”
“I will be coming into work today, so you can see for yourself then.”
His disapproval was expected. “I told you, Rina. Your job here is safe until you are fully recovered enough to resume. Take your time to rest. You can tell me where you are so I can come see you.”
“I hope you don’t take it the wrong way, Joel,” Rina said quietly, sauntering out of the closet. “But I really do not want anyone to know where I am right now. It doesn’t mean I don’t trust you, but I have zero clue how my anti-fans knew where I lived.”
“You didn’t see it?”
“See what?”
Joel muttered a long string of curse words under his breath. “Someone leaked your address on the internet. It was everywhere Instagram, Twitter, and even some small news outlets published it on their websites, of course with fake IP addresses that make it practically impossible to trace them. In a matter of seconds, it was everywhere with billions of views and reposts.”
“Oh,” Rina muttered flatly. That definitely made it more interesting. She’d thought all along that someone had followed her back to the cottage, but at the same time, Rina knew she was always careful to ensure no one was right behind her. And Zayn must have done the same. “I wonder who did that.”
“Just let it go, Rina,” Joel said, always wanting to move on from things, and never fight back. It was one of the reasons Rina never gave any attention to his advances. “We can make the media appreciate you again, make the public like you. Let’s just give this time to settle and you can get right back to work.”
“I’m coming in today, Joel, only if you don’t want me to work for O. S. N anymore.”
“Rina!”
“I can’t sit back at home doing nothing, while the world thinks I ran away because they tried to scare me a little. I didn’t back down when I got blacklisted, Joel, so I’m not doing that right now. We agreed to have an evaluation today with the other models, and we are going to do just that. You put me in charge of the models, and I want to do my job.”
Joel sighed exasperatedly, wondering if Rina was always that stubborn. But in the entertainment industry, one didn’t get as far as Rina did in her career by accepting everything that was tossed her way. Fighting back was one of the many skills she picked up along the way, and she had all intent to use it until she got to the finish line.
“Okay,” he sighed. “You can come back. But remember that everyone here is talking about you too. The designers are divided. While some think it is bold of you to want to come back to the public’s face, others despise you and I’m not even mincing words right now. They have no clue that you’re the victim, and if I say anything, it’s just going to affirm the rumor that you…you know?”
“That I slept with you to get my job?” Rina chuckled. She knew it wouldn’t affirm anything since people loved to think whatever their minds made up. But Rina understood why Joel needed to stay on the line. If he showed any allegiance to her despite everything that had been said, despite everything trending on the internet, the sales at O. S. N fashion house would be affected, and that in turn would affect the business as a whole. Joel helped Rina at a time when she really needed it, but she had no plans of letting her problems affect him.
It was the reason she asked George to send out proposals to agencies willing to accept her. Rina needed to move on from O. S. N. Joel had done a lot for her, but that wasn’t her destination.
However, until she got something better, she was just going to have to stay put.